Spring Boot JPA H2 Console not running, application.properties file ignored

The Spring Boot guide says I can get the H2 console but it's not working for me.

http://localhost:8080/h2/ Whitelabel Error Page This application has no explicit mapping for /error, so you are seeing this as a fallback. Wed Oct 26 12:31:46 BST 2016 There was an unexpected error (type=Not Found, status=404). No message available

I created an application.properties file as follows

spring.h2.console.enabled=true 
spring.h2.console.path=/h2

My project is based on this

The default path /h2-console doesn't work either.

I found another answer where the problem is solved by adding to Application.java:

    @Bean
public ServletRegistrationBean h2servletRegistration() {
    ServletRegistrationBean registration = new ServletRegistrationBean(new WebServlet());
    registration.addUrlMappings("/h2/*");
    return registration;
}

Everything in my application.properties file is ignored. I have tried adding:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:file:~/portal;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE
spring.datasource.username=sa
spring.datasource.password=
spring.datasource.driverClassName=org.h2.Driver

But the database is still created in memory only.

Your current location src\main\java\h‌​ello\application.pro‌​perties is the culprit. For 2 reasons.

1. Non java resources in src\main\java are ignored
2. only application.properties in the root or config directory or taken into account (by default). (See the reference guide).

The fix is to simply move your application.properties to src\main\resources.